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Jan 24, 2018 at 5:43 PMJan 24, 2018 at 5:43 PM

There’s no string section in the Black Jacket Symphony — unless they happen to need one.

The name can be confusing for folks that haven’t heard of the rock and roll band, formed in 2009 by Birmingham's J. Willoughby, the band’s music director. Rather than the orchestral interpretation of “symphony,” Black Jacket Symphony refers to the style of concert: taking a single album by a popular band and playing it from front to back during the first part of a show, much like an orchestra might play symphonies by Mozart or Bach; the second half of the night is a greatest-hits set. They’ve performed more than 50 albums, including Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Queen’s “A Night at the Opera” and Guns N’ Roses “Appetite for Destruction.”

The band isn’t made of set members — when they come to Center Stage in Gadsden on Feb. 2 to play Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Second Helping," they’ll be one of two Black Jacket Symphony bands performing that night, the other doing Tom Petty in Tennessee — but Willoughby makes sure that the musicians are ready with the right gear and skills for perfect recreations of classic albums.

We talked with him about finding the right musicians for each album, pushing for perfect performances and his own musical background:

As you’re getting ready for these albums, you’re kind of crawling around in these artist’s heads and figuring out the music. Does it change your perspective at all on the writing they did?

Oh yeah. It’s kind of funny, and I’m not going to say who, but I do definitely come out with an opinion of all these bands, and I love them all. It’s like comparing it to whiskey: There’s no “bad” whiskey. But I come out with more appreciation for somebody that I didn’t think I liked as much as I ended up liking, and sometimes the other way. Sometimes I come out thinking, “That’s not really as cool as I thought it was.” There’s a lot of homework, lots and lots. They all learn their individual parts and they run them as a team, almost like a football team.

When you get everyone together for that first rehearsal, how do you push for really amazing performances?

A lot of these guys we’ve used in and out, and a lot have done a whole lot of this. There’s a strange, friendly competitiveness, and that makes it easy for me to sit back and kind of let them — they show up in the first rehearsal and one guy knows all his stuff, and then another guy not quite as much. He’ll know it next rehearsal, let’s put it that way. And when we hire him again, he’ll have it the first time he comes in. They don’t want to let the other guy down and they want to know their stuff.

When it comes to singers, do you tell them to sing like themselves or try to imitate the artists?

There’s a fine line depending on the artist, like Freddie Mercury. I wanted to do that for a long time, but I knew I had to get a vocalist who really had the vibe and sound or it wouldn’t work. I waited two years before I got that. I messaged Mark Martel (singer of official Queen tribute band, The Queen Extravaganza) and didn’t hear back for a time and thought I would just keep looking, and I couldn’t find anybody else that could get into that.

It’s Freddie Mercury, you can’t just force it.

That’s right. So it depends on how iconic the voice is, if that makes sense? Freddie Mercury, you’ve got to get right in there, pretty much to an imitation level. I don’t like imitating. But you’ve got to find the right guy who has that in him anyway. Usually if you find a fan, and a lot of these musicians have been playing since they were young and this is why they’ve gotten into playing. There will be a Led Zeppelin guy, that’s what got him playing the guitar. If you find that, that is his heart, then usually you’re halfway there, at least.

You’re in a position to play when you want to, but you’re also able to give other musicians jobs, which sounds like the dream come true. Do you see yourself going back into original work again, like with (prior band) the Newboys, or do you see yourself sticking with management of Black Jacket for as long as it’s viable?

I’m sticking with this… the Newboys? [laughs] You remember the Newboys?

I try to do my research.

[laughs] It’s different, and you know, yeah, I was in a little band called the Newboys that traveled the Southeast college circuit and did all that, then moved to Nashville as a songwriter for a while and was signed to Capitol — it is what it is, the music business changes and you’ve got to change with it. I love what I do. In as much as anything else, as much as I love songwriting and playing originals, I did just love that. That’s what my radio show is about, I love the history of rock and roll, of music. I’m obsessed with it. And this scratches both, if that makes any sense, to get into the history of these classic albums. It gives me the best of what I love.

Being in charge of this thing, you can kind of do what you want, but being that you’re playing music that people know, you have to cater to what people might want to hear, too.

Right, it’s the age-old “art versus commerce.” There’s a bunch of albums I’d like to do but I know I’d be the only one there.

That’s what I wanted to ask about! What do you want to do that you think will never fly with an audience, but would be cool to get out there and play?

Golly. We talk about this on the bus, this is always a fun little conversation. I’m a Beatles fanatic, so some of the earlier stuff, like “Ram,” by Paul McCartney. For some reason, maybe it was my age, I was young, young, young, but “Ram” kind of got me into the Beatles, almost, so that’s a special one to me, but I’m not sure anybody will show up to hear “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey.”

You don’t cover the work of bands that are still active and touring, but if you were made to pick an artist from the last ten or 15 years that you’d want to work on, regardless of their status, who would it be?

Radiohead. They’re one of the last real “album” bands that are out there. And there are others, there’s great music, it’s just that the “album” era is over because of the way we get music now. Through the mid-60s it was a singles-driven market, and then the album, with “Sgt. Pepper,” I guess, and “Pet Sounds,” that kind of introduced the album era, and that lasted through the 80s and 90s. Because of downloading, it’s kind of gone back to cherry-picking and buying singles. I have a 14-year-old daughter, I’m not sure if she’ll listen to a whole song, let alone a whole album. [laughs]

Black Jacket Symphony performs at Center Stage, 209 Rescia St. in Rainbow City, at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $25, with $450 skyboxes available, which includes 10 tickets. All admission is seated. Visit centerstageproductions.net to buy tickets, or call 256-490-2772 for skybox tickets.

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